Negotiations between the U.S. and Tehran in Islamabad unsurprisingly came to nothing, and now we are preparing to implement a blockade of Iran.
Reportedly, the U.S. demanded that Iran end all uranium enrichment, dismantle what’s left of its enrichment facilities, and hand over its highly enriched uranium. Iran refused, just as it did prior to the war. Despite notionally being committed to reopening the Strait of Hormuz as part of a two-week cease-fire, Tehran has still been threatening shipping and charging fees to allow select ships to pass.
This is a frank violation of international law, an affront to free navigation of the seas that has been a core commitment of Anglo-American naval policy for centuries, and a clear and present danger to the global economy. There’s no way that the U.S. can simply accept it — this is literally why we have the Fifth Fleet. After the breakdown of the negotiations, Trump issued a welcome statement deeming the Iranian gambit completely intolerable.
The question now is, as it has been for weeks, what to do about it? In his social media post, Trump said he would blockade the Strait of Hormuz. This would exert U.S. control and squeeze Iranian revenues and China’s supply of oil but wouldn’t do anything immediately to reopen the strait or relieve the economic pressure on our allies.
Hours later, CENTCOM put out a statement saying that it would blockade Iranian ports, not the strait. This makes more sense as a step toward crashing the Iranian economy, and one that doesn’t entail destroying Iranian electricity generation or oil infrastructure. But it won’t be easy. The operation will strain U.S. naval resources, and Iran will presumably shift as much transit as possible to overland routes.
It could always happen that the Iranian state simply runs out of cash to sustain itself, but we are discovering the difficulty of getting a fanatical theocracy that valorizes martyrdom to say “uncle.” The regime has sustained a terrible pounding from the air and yet still won’t give up its nuclear ambitions. It hopes to use de facto control of the strait as a source of influence and revenue to survive and fight another day when its fierce adversary Donald Trump is gone from office.
If Iran is denied the strait, it will be stripped of one of its final strategic assets. So long, though, as President Trump is apparently unwilling to undertake the protracted, granular military operation necessary to secure the strait, the U.S. will have to use indirect pressure campaigns, like the blockade, to attempt to force Iran to loosen its grip.
If Trump has been characteristically erratic, there’s nothing wrong, in theory, with trying different tactics to achieve an objective in the course of a war. But free navigation of the strait should be nonnegotiable.